I bought the final occupants for my 55 gl a few weeks ago, and everything seems to be doing fine until today. 4 of my 10 neon tetras seem to have disappeared, and earlier I still saw 7, now its down to 6.

The rest of the tank are 2 flame gouramis (1 1/2 inch each), one small angel fish (same size), 6 rosey barbs, 4 platies, 10 zebra danios and one pictus catfish. I am really puzzled on where my neons went. The angel and the two gouramis aren't bothering anybody, and those are the three fish that I was worried about being nippy to others. The rest of the fish just mind their own business, and the pictus is too lazy to even lift his behind off the tank bottom. No dead fish I can see, and nothing stuck to my two filters. What is going on??

I do not know about the gouramis but my uncle's angel fish eat his neons one by one. Even when he got a new small angel it still manages to somehow eat the neons. Most of the time when you look at his tank everyone is very peaceful, but occasionally the angel decides it is hungry or the neons are in "his" territory and goes after one of them.

My other thought would be if the neons were dying for some reason and the catfish is cleaning up?

Hope you figure out whats going on in your tank.

How bigs the pictus? From what I know of them, they love a good tetra.

Neons are pretty fragile, they could be dying and being eaten by the other fish...

Angel fish eat neon tetras coz they did i my tank, until i removed them.

I found when my neons started going missing it was the catfish most recently. So remaining neons were removed and are thriving.

In a prior tropical tank I had the angel fish killed off a lot of my fish mainly neons and guppies.

So your culprit will be one of your tanks residents Andrea.

Yea, neon tetras are food to a couple of your tank's occupants. Both the pictus and the angel fish eat live fish (they don't have to wait for the neons to be dead, they'll hunt them down at night). If you've got your heart set on tetras, you're going to have to pick some of the larger ones. Platty- or Molly-size fish are probably the smallest things you could put in there, and even that might be pushing it as your pictus gets larger.

Yeah, I suspect the neons disappear at night, and somebody gets a midnight snack out of them. Down to 4 now, and they are in a separate 10 gl tank for now.

I really love those little neons, and they gave a nice color contract to the otherwise red/yellow tank occupants, plus they are a different size, which makes it kind of interesting. Well, I guess its a neon-only tank for those guys. Zebra danios are still accounted for, so I suspect they are already too big for the angel of pictus to fetch them. Btw, the pictus is 3 1/2 inches now.

Ranchugirl, you should go measure him again, I bet he's grown to 4" by today

balashark, I just had to giggle at that comment!

Wow Ranchugirl, sorry to hear that you are having problems. I wonder about the danios; they don't get very big either. Maybe they are too fast for the prey to catch them? I would keep my eye on them too, just as a precaution.

LOL. I'll tell ya though, my pictus is a full year younger than the balas, and he's trying his hardest to catch up to them in size.